City Growth

DaemonDivinity

Chieftain
Joined
Nov 16, 2005
Messages
70
Ok, jumping to Monarch now. Just some quickies, minor weak points of my own I've noticed that I'd like help fixing.

1. Early expansion I usually go worker, chop worker, chop settler. Then I try to go for a rapid-expansion to 5 cities. I sometimes then run into animal problems though. I'm just curious if I'd maybe be better off going worker, chop settler, or maybe another path?

2. Without rivers, since most terrain is a fairly even mix of grassland and plains, I'm at a loss as to how to get the city to hit 20. It seems like unless you have a river, your city's max pop is limited to around however many grasslands there are. Any advice or do I just tough it?

3. I've got no real problem specializing commerce vs production vs GP cities anymore. But I do not understand how you can specialize within commerce cities. As in, with the sliders, the only reason I can see not to build all the +treasury/+science buildings is if you heavily use specialists. Is this just the way it is, and you gotta tough it out and build all?
 
For #3, I don't specilize too much in my commerce cities but there is one clear distinction you should be aware of, that of a science city and a gold city. Since the slider is global you really have to specialize this using improvements. Your gold city will spend its time building markets and banks and that sort of thing. But you will have to find some other means to generate commerce and thus gold for those buildings to work, ideally you want to maintain 100% science so that leaves specialists and religion. Its hard to control exactly which city is going to get founded but if you only have one choice then you know where it will go. But that doesn't matter absolutely as you can easily get 10-20 gold per turn just from spreading the religion both in your kingdom and out. That with some moderate food will give you room for merchants and other useful specialists.

Having a gold city like this also gives you an effective use of any of those great people that generate gold that you have no other use for. Dropping an artist in there can easily give you 10 gpt early on, and in the later game its much much more.
 
DaemonDivinity said:
2. Without rivers, since most terrain is a fairly even mix of grassland and plains, I'm at a loss as to how to get the city to hit 20. It seems like unless you have a river, your city's max pop is limited to around however many grasslands there are. Any advice or do I just tough it?
Pay close attention to food resources when placing a city. Getting an extra +5 food resource in the fat cross means you can work 3 more cottaged plains (or mined grassland/hills - you get the idea).

I always try to maximize bonus food resources in the fat cross, even if it means forcing a bonus-shield or bonus-commerce resource out of the cross. Extra food allows you to make up lost production with a mined hill and lost commerce with an extra cottage or two.
 
Huh? A gold city? That too me sounds rather silly, since your science slider will often be at 80%+. This means that your building bonus to gold output is only a quarter of what you would get from science. Hence you should in most cases always prioritize science improvements over money ones. Though market is a happyness building, and grocer a heatlh one.

You should have more than one commerce city, a few balanced ones and a few production ones. Commerce cities should have heavy cottage, ideally have a river and be coastal as well, have a few hills to be able to construct your improvements. If there are overlapped tiles, your commercial city should always be the one to have the maximum benefit of the tiles at higher population size. No military units should be built from these cities, only the occasional wonder and settlers/workers in the beginning, since food is production for these units as well.

Because, what yeilds the most revenue? a bank (+50% money) or a library (+25 science) in a 40 commerce city at 80% science slider?

library - 40 science 8 gold - total 48
bank - 32 science 12 gold - total 44

To me this is a nobrainer at least. You always want BOTH science and money buildings in these cities of course because of high commerce, but science takes precedence. Just adjust your slider every now and then if cash gets too low. Ideally, reduce your science slider after the bank has been built in your science city, and in the same way increase it only after a library has been built etc.
 
Luhh said:
since your science slider will often be at 80%+. This means that your building bonus to gold output is only a quarter of what you would get from science. Hence you should in most cases always prioritize science improvements over money ones. Though market is a happyness building, and grocer a heatlh one.

Eh, maybe if you stick to settling 4 or 5 cities and never going to war until middle ages or later. Most of the time your slider may drop pretty low and marketplaces/courthouses are a much higher priority than libraries.
 
Huh? A gold city? That too me sounds rather silly, since your science slider will often be at 80%+. This means that your building bonus to gold output is only a quarter of what you would get from science.
No, it means that your building bonus to gold output generated by commerce is only a quarter of what you would get from science generated by commerce.

There are ways of generating gold other than through commerce.


And as oggums says, your science slider won't always be 80%+. In my first successful domination victory (whose score totally blew away all other games I've played), my science slider was almost never above 50%. For that reason, I built mostly grocers, markets, and banks. Some cities built libraries, and only a few built anything more advanced for research!
 
Luhh said:
You always want BOTH science and money buildings in these cities of course because of high commerce, but science takes precedence. Just adjust your slider every now and then if cash gets too low. Ideally, reduce your science slider after the bank has been built in your science city, and in the same way increase it only after a library has been built etc.
thats what i thought, why stop at one, if I have the time to build it I will!
 
In late game Domination pushes, I often drop the science slider to 0 or 10% to upgrade and cash rush units/buildings once I discover what I think is the last tech I will need (Usually robotics). You can generate a lot more military might this way and get newly conquered cities up to speed quickly. Like all things in this crazy game, the slider use tactics depend on game conditions and the type of victory you are after.

More on the OP topic, however,
1) I have not tried 2 workers and a settler without some military units in between yet. I assume that on monarch and above, some protective units and anti-barbarian sentries become even more important. I am having problems with monarch difficulty myself.

2) I seldom hit 20 with many cities, especially before biology. I am too cottage-centric I suppose. To get there, it seems you need more farms than I am comfortable building. I am interested in the answers others might have to this question though.

3) To me you can specialize cities in commerce, production, or specialists. The specialist cities will all generate GP, but can sub-specialize in science, gold, production, or culture - all of which affect the type of GP's you get. It is maddeningly complex, no? :)
 
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